A/N: I'm so excited for this one! Aurette was my normal alpha/beta reader, and I haven't been back long enough to have found a new one yet. If you are an author that I know from the long ago, and you have any interest in beta-ing, let me know. (Ha!) Anyhoo, please forgive any mistakes on my part. This is blatantly and UNASHAMEDLY AU, so please ignore any discrepancies from canon.
I am not JKR, and I don't own anything you recognize. I'm just playing in her playground.
Chapter One:
The End of It All
September 23, 1998 – when Light and Dark are balanced
"Be safe," Hermione whispered to Harry and Ron, grasping their hands in each of hers. "Oh, be safe! Now go!" The boys left the darkness and shelter of the tree line, running across the smoking battlefield toward the frontline. Hexes and curses sizzled around them, passing close enough to their faces that she could see the lenses of Harry's glasses flare red and green and purple. She turned toward Professor Snape. "Are you ready?"
He nodded, though his jaw ticked as he looked down into her face. His shoulders drew a tense line across the clouded sky, and he rubbed one arm which poked out from a sleeve that had been burned off by a hex. His dark mark was smudged across his skin – a complete absence of light.
"Well?" he snarked. Hermione opened her beaded bag and pulled out a potions vial that glowed an angry red.
"Down the hatch," she muttered and raised the potion to her mouth. Her stomach churned with anxiety. Out on the battlefield in front of her, she heard someone scream. Parvati? No, Lavendar. She filed that worry away for later, a recitation of the dead or dying at battle's end.
"Don't." Professor Snape wrapped his long-fingered hand around her wrist, arresting its motion and plucking the potion from her nerveless fingers. "Ms. Granger, I can't allow this."
She tried to shake off his hold. "That's ridiculous. You agreed to this plan, and you certainly didn't argue when Ron and Harry volunteered."
He grimaced but didn't move away. "I was never going to be able to stop them. The prophecy was specific about Mr. Potter, and the ginger menace wasn't going to be left behind. But there's no need to throw yourself away… to throw all of your potential away. I refuse." Behind his back, Hermione saw a flare of fire as Molly and Arthur Weasley worked in tandem to throw back a vanguard of Greyback's werewolves. The ash of burning hair and fur blew toward them, and she coughed.
"There's no time to argue about this. If we delay the boys will die. Give it back, Professor."
"Foolish girl," he whispered and for once it didn't sound disdainful. He raised the vial to his lips and swallowed. He began to shake, dropping her wrist, and bent over, placing his hands on his knees. Sooty red wisps of potion fumes curled out of his nostrils. "We must hurry. I can feel the call already." He stood, pressing the tip of his wand to her throat and dragged her out of the forest.
In view of the battlefield, he cast an Incarcerous and a Mobilicorpus on her prone body and ran through the battlefield toward the Quidditch Pitch.
"I've got Harry Potter's Mudblood," he crowed to the handful of Death Eaters that stood guard around Voldemort. "Let me through so I can present her to the Dark Lord." They pulled back and Snape Finited the binding spell and Mobilicorpus. Hermione crashed to the ground and cried out in pain. The Dark Lord sat in a chair that one of his faithful must have dragged down from observation booth at the head of the field. Nagini lay draped around his shoulders, her flicking tongue the only sign she was alive. Only the most trusted of Voldemort's inner circle remained with him – five Death Eaters at most. The rest were engaged in battle.
Hermione shrieked, twisting in Snape's grasp as he dragged to her feet by her hair. "You fucking traitor!" In the distance, dogs began to bay. "You've condemned us! There's no hope left." Her throat was gripped tight by terror, her voice raw. Behind her, Antonin Dolohov and Bellatrix laughed, congratulating Snape on his prime catch. His pulled her toward the feet of the Dark Lord.
Every step brought her closer, the oily wash of his magic spilling over her. It had a taste to it, a film that crawled into her mouth, coated her tongue and made her gag. She pushed it away, clutching her beaded bag closer beneath her cloak. She shrank back when they reached the Dark Lord on his throne, his red eyes rimmed with pink and full of glee.
"My Severus," Voldemort whispered. "How you have exceeded my expectations time and again." He stood as they approached, and when Snape threw Hermione at his feet, the despot took a fatherly grip of Snape's shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her teacher's hand clench into a fist.
The baying of the dogs sounded closer to Hermione. She took a breath and looked up at Voldemort. She wasn't a fool. Her eyes danced around his robes, the tatters and blood stains at the hem and at his fraying cuffs. She kept her gaze averted from his face. Surely, the dogs would be here soon? She wondered. Would it be soon enough?
"My Lord," he choked. "You do me such honor." Snapes voice sounded thick as if with emotion, but Hermione watched as his nails began to darken from pale to black as the potion took effect. He bowed his head. At the edges of Voldemort's camp where it bled into the battlefield, sounds of surprise followed by shouting. Two dogs, giant black slavering beasts, tore through the battle lines and ran toward Voldemort's Death Eater honor guard. Their eyes glowed red, and their howls were mad, manic things that caused even Hermione's heart to quail. Under the cover of her cloak, she slipped her hand into the beaded bag. Please, please. I have such need, she thought and closed her hand around a hilt far too large for her hand.
Voldemort raised the Elder Wand and cast Avada Kedavras at the animals. The flick of his wrist was contemptuous even as the dogs bayed in triumph and tore through his defenders. The green light of the curse bounced off their thick black hides, and the Dark Lord turned to fully face the threat that had just ripped his most powerful Death Eaters into bloody pieces, presenting his back to Hermione.
She lunged to her feet, the sword of Gryffindor clutched in her hand, but Goddess, it was so heavy. She couldn't lift the point of the sword off the ground. Even as she had the thought, it shrank to a ten-inch blade. The rubies on the crossguard faded into nothingness and the hilt turned a pure white, paler than bone. Wasting no more time, Hermione slipped the knife into Voldemort's side. She'd studied how to slip a blade beneath the fourth and fifth ribs on the left and up into the heart, and she knew it was difficult to do correctly, so she thrust strategically expecting to encounter muscle and bone resistance.
The dagger glowed an incandescent white and slipped through Voldemort's body as if it were feather down. Relieved, Hermione slid the blade into and through his heart, twisting it to cause maximum damage. He fell forward onto his face, Nagini hissing as she dropped with him.
For a mad moment, Hermione wanted to laugh. At least he doesn't have a nose to break. Voldemort was still alive, scrabbling weakly at the ground. Avoiding the twisting, coiling snake still wrapped around his body, she heaved him over onto his back and lifted the dagger again. Before she could deliver the mortal blow, the dogs were on them, and she was shouldered out of the way. The blade fell to the ground as she pulled herself out of the way of the mad beasts.
"Severus," he whimpered and reached out with a hand curled into a claw as the dogs ravaged him and tore Nagini to bits. "Help, please." Snape turned to his old master, and the whites of his eyes were gone, enveloped in the black of his irises.
The Potions master's laugh sounded more like the bay of a hunting hound. His flesh boiled and sprouted fur and his lean frame curled and dropped to all fours. The cù-sith(1), for that's what he became, was taller than the others. His head came up to Hermione's ribs, and his eyes had pinpricks of red in them, the same red as the potion he'd drunk.
As Snape joined with his pack, Voldemort gave his death rattle and a fine mist rose from his corpse and started to drift on the ashy wind.
Panicked, Hermione shouted "Ad manum meam, canes! Ad me vocant, canes!(2)" All three coin-shith dropped back and sat on their flanks, looking to their Huntmaster. "Take him," she snarled. "Take him to Death." The two smaller beasts, the Harry-dog and Ron-dog grabbed the floating mist with teeth, and it solidified where their jaws met the spirit. It writhed, trying to escape them. The two dogs growled at each other, fighting over the scrap of soul until the largest cù-sith stepped between them. They dropped their heads and backed away in deference as Snape grabbed the remains of the Dark Lord and shook him until he stopped fighting.
And then the three coin-shith began to run, disappearing into the distance faster than should have been possible. Voldemort had spent decades hiding from Death, and the Hounds were delivering him to His feet. Hermione sank to the ground and watched her friends disappear.
Despite Voldemort's demise, it wasn't over quickly after that. If the Order had hoped that the Death Eaters would throw down their wands and give up, they were mistaken. All of Voldemort's faithful knew that at best, their fate would leave them tormented by dementors in a seaside cell at Azkaban for the rest of their lives. They fought with renewed vigor, hoping to turn the tide. The Order of the Phoenix held their own but couldn't overcome them. The curses and hexes being passed back and forth were weak, throwing failing sparks in the darkening day.
In the end it was, of all people, Percy Weasley and a small contingent of aurors faithful to Mad Eye that turned the tide. The fresh combatants burst onto the battlefield and overwhelmed the magically exhausted camp of Death Eaters. They were rounded up and summarily dispatched to the holding cells in the bowels of the ministry. Minerva McGonagall, covered in mud and blood, sent her patronus to St. Mungo's, and in short order, healers and mediwitches and mediwizards were popping onto the battlefield in full kit to sort out the dead and dying.
There was no sign of Snape, Harry, or Ron.
A/N: Like it, love it, hate it, review it.
1. A mythological hound from Scottish folklore whose howls presage or cause death. Plural: Coin-shith(e)
2. To my hand, dogs. At my call, dogs.